WUWT reader KS of North Dakota emailed a request to ctm based on reading ‘alarming’ Wired journalism concerning $50 million being spent to further study the ‘dangerous’ Thwaites glacier in Antarctica. KS asked if WUWT could perhaps produce a factual overview. ctm asked me to provide it, since I had written an extensive essay ‘Tipping Points’ in ebook Blowing Smoke on this very sea level rise (SLR) subject (and more). What follows is a lightly rewritten and slightly expanded/updated excerpt for KS and the rest of WUWT.

There are only three ice sheets in the world with the potential to accelerate SLR to alarming levels: Greenland, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).

In ‘theory’ Greenland could melt, since there is observed summer melting. It cannot calve (slide into) into the sea (although there are fringe glaciers like Jacobshaven that do, the Titanic sinking being evidence) because Greenland is bowl shaped. At the observed average annual ice mass loss of the past ~2.5 decades (from 1990) Greenland would theoretically take 27000 years to melt. At the ice mass loss rate since 2000, it would only take 14000 years and would increase SLR by a distinctly unalarming ~0.5mm/yr. In reality, given Greenland’s latitude and central ice sheet elevation, melting is impossible—as ice cores reaching back to the Eemian prove. Calculations and references behind this brief summary are provided in ‘Tipping Points’.

Campaign rhetoric strongly suggested that the Trump Administration would redress the Obama Administration’s insane attempts to regulate every aspect of society in a futile attempt to control nature and climate. President Trump withdrew from the Paris Accord, initiated repeal of the Clean Power Plan, sought a reasonable replacement for the plan, and turned off the regulatory fire hose. Great start!

But two years in, it is clear that the administration has stalled on dealing with the most significant part of Obama regulatory overreach: the 2009 Endangerment Finding – the Environmental Protection Agency’s declaration that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threaten the health and welfare of current and future generations.

A study suggests that growing prosperity in China coupled with expected future global warming will drive an explosion in Chinese electricity Demand.

Climate Change Could Ramp Up Electricity Use in China

By Roni Dengler | January 2, 2019 1:41 pm

As the Earth heats up thanks to climate change, people are cranking up the air conditioning. Pumping in that cooled air also increases electricity use, and especially so in countries where people are just beginning to make heavy use of the electrical grid. Case in point: China, where researchers find that climate change will significantly escalate electricity consumption.

“China is now the largest economy in the world, and their electricity sector is probably the largest single place where policy changes will affect greenhouse gas emissions,” said William Pizer, an expert in public and environmental policy at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who led the new research.

Australia, Canada, France and the U.S. have all seen push back against global warming policies

That included weeks of riots in France against planned carbon tax increases

Despite increasingly apocalyptic warnings from U.N. officials, 2018 has seen a number of high-profile defeats for policies aimed at fighting global warming. Politicians and voters pushed back at attempts to raise energy prices as part of the climate crusade.

It started in June with election of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Ontario residents overwhelmingly voted Ford’s conservative coalition into power on a platform that included axing the Canadian province’s cap-and-trade program.

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for December, 2018 was +0.25 deg. C, down a little from +0.28 deg. C in November:

Global area-averaged lower tropospheric temperature anomalies (departures from 30-year calendar monthly means, 1981-2010). The 13-month centered average is meant to give an indication of the lower frequency variations in the data; the choice of 13 months is somewhat arbitrary… an odd number of months allows centered plotting on months with no time lag between the two plotted time series. The inclusion of two of the same calendar months on the ends of the 13 month averaging period causes no issues with interpretation because the seasonal temperature cycle has been removed, and so has the distinction between calendar months.

The climate crisis industry incessantly claims that fossil fuel emissions are causing unprecedented temperature, climate and weather changes that pose existential threats to human civilization and our planet. The only solution, Climate Crisis, Inc. insists, is to eliminate the oil, coal and natural gas that provide 80% of the energy that makes US and global economies, health and living standards possible.